[MUD-Dev] [decentralization] Re: Reputation device (fwd)

[Crosbie Fitch]

From: J C Lawrence

> He finds that complete identity is the highest quality of
> exchange, but this is obviously only possible in a closed
> community and not something I believe is feasible or desireable on
> the Net.

Being able to map a virtual identity to a real world identity is not
necessary if a player highly values their virtual identity and its
reputation.

Therefore the key is in ensuring that a virtual identity is
something that most players will come to value, i.e. not as
disposable as just another meaningless/forgettable pseudonym.

In terms of client-side hosting (serverless/p2p games), the virtual
identity is the player's machine identity (not any avatars), and so
if the quality of the game (for the player) improves the better the
reputation of this machine identity (and the reputation is tied to
the machine identity) then the player has an incentive to maintain
this machine identity. Otherwise, they might as well create a new
identity each time they played.

Granted, the abuse will be to build up a machine identity, and then
when the player gets bored or pissed off, may consider the sacrifice
of that identity/reputation worth the pyrhhic pleasure of a
temporary reduction in quality for a few other players. This is a
little equivalent to a Usenet pseudonym building up a good
reputation and then flipping and flaming/slandering everyone,
shortly to never be seen again (unless people recognise the writing
style). The trick is, to ensuring that there's no glass ceiling to a
reputation, i.e. it's always got to be more attractive to make an N
point reputation into an N+10 point one, than to start back at zero,
e.g. if a 50 point reputation is just as good as a 100 point one,
then people will start to flake out after 50.

A reputation is no good unless its level is commensurate with the
reward it earns. That's why tieing the quality of a player's
modelling experience to their machine's reputation should be a
pretty good incentive. It's like giving new players 36K modems, and
once their machine's built up enough trust, it's like they have ADSL
modems.


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